Archive for October, 2009
art therapy?
Hi, I work with emotionally disabled children and children with Autism from ages 3 to 5. This year I will be conducting art therapy lessons with the kids. Since I’m pretty new to the field I’m open to any suggestions and help offered by more experienced therapists. Do you have any ideas for specific art activities that will be exciting, stimulating and appropriate for their age range? I aim of course looking for whatever is novel to them and will prompt them to get their hands dirty and work on their motor skills and imagination!!! (Also, any refrences are helpful…)Thank you!!!
I used to put on a holiday carnival specially designed to appeal to, and address the needs of, children with autism. I found that the projects that most appealed to them were those that did not require rigid adherence to specific "rules" or methods in order to be successful. For instance, we allowed them to make picture frames with popsicle sticks, glue/tape, and stickers. Some kids liked to completely cover the wood with stickers so that no stick showed through. Others only wanted green stickers, and wanted them lined up "just so." Stil others didn’t want their sticks to cross or overlap at the corners – they wanted them to only touch one another at the edges, and so on. The more flexible the project was, to accommodate each of these idiosyncratic ways of viewing it, the more successful the project seemed to be. We had a digital camera and color printer set up so that we could take a photo of each child, print it out, and put it in the frame once it was finished. This worked well with all but one child, who did not want his picture taken. When we asked him what he wanted to put in his picture, he said "Santa," so we drew a picture of Santa and put that in, instead.
Also, one of the things my own daughter (who has autism) loved to do was mix colors. We started with the primary colors (red, yellow and blue), just food coloring in water in a clear container. Then, she practiced pouring a little of each into other clear containers – red and yellow to make orange, red and blue to make purple, and so on. She loved it so much, in fact, that when we tried to get her to do other work, we used repeating this little "experiment" out as her "reward" for finishing other assignments!
As a counterpoint, those projects that absolutely were NOT successful were those that required a specicfic attention to detail in order to turn out properly, and/or did not have any immediate gratification/pay-off built into them. One in which salt, paste, and some other household items were used to make snow appear on dark paper was a total bust because a) the ingredients needed to be applied in a specific way, and b) they needed a certain amount of time in which to "react" and cause the snow-like appearance. If a child got impatient and put the salt on first, or did not want to wait for the crystals to develeop, or put too much water on, or something, the whole project was off. We also tried to get the kids to lie down on butcher paper so we could trace their bodies, and let them fill them in. They didn’t want to hold still to lie down, didn’t feel comfortable with others getting so close to their personal space in tracing, and, I think, felt pressured to put the right features in the right spots on the finished products and so became very frustrated with the whole process. So I would recommend staying away from anything like that.
Anyway, hope this helps. Good luck!
Nursing Intervention on Hallucination and Art Therapy?
lookig for ideas on activities that I can do on a person with hallucination ? I also have to look for ideas for art therapy. I have to present this in class infront of my classmates
Here are some exercises/activities that you can adjust to your liking:
http://www.arttherapyblog.com/c/art-therapy-activities/
Concepts and ideas:
http://www.arttherapyblog.com/c/art-therapy-ideas/
I’ve also made a note to add more specific information to the website about how art therapy can help with people who hallucinate.
Hope this helps!
What do you do during art therapy?
I am going to do a trial study at a pain management program, and I will be trying art therapy.
I have bad pain in knees and joints, and I was wondering how this will help? And what will i do there?
It sounds fun!
the class is free. Its a trial study.
Who is paying for art therapy? Can I tell you that whom ever is cearting that class is so smart. I think everyone should have art therapy.. It is a peaceful moment.
Peace – NO WAR – or GWBush makes us a whore.
Art Therapy program at the San Diego ZooArt Therapy: How to Change the World to a Happy Place with Bright Colorful Crayons and Love
BabyZ lost her dog Katie and was sad. She asked her dad where would her dog go. DaddooX told her that Katie is going to a beautiful happy place, and suggested they draw it together. So they did. With lots of pretty crayons and smiles. And BabyZ was happy again, and felt better knowing her dog was somewhere colorful and fun. DaddooX taught her that when we’re sad we can visualize what we want in our hearts and where we want to be in our lives, and put ourselves back on the path to our happiness and our dreams.
Duration : 0:2:37